TV's Top 10 Sinners

These Merchants of Menace Kill, Cheat, Lie, Covet, Embezzle, Kidnap—and Then They Get Nasty

Adam Carrington of Dynasfy (played by Gordon Thomson) was kidnapped in his youth and won't let his family forget it. Clearly the connivingest Carrington (and that's saying something), Adam once raped the butler's daughter, tried to kill his brother-in-law by having poison paint applied to his office walls and then attempted to implicate his mother in the crime, married his brother's ex-wife and then tried to cheat her of her inheritance and is now trying to trick his ill father into signing over power of attorney so he can win control of Denver Carrington. This is a son even a mother couldn't love.

Dorian Lord on One Life To Live married well and plans to keep it that way. Among other infractions, Dorian (Robin Strasser) refused to give her first (and need we say wealthy) husband the medicine he needed to stay alive. She caused a bribery scandal that forced another husband to give up the governorship. The ever-manipulative Dorian also pretended she was paralyzed in order to keep the man she was in love with from marrying another woman. If the lethal Miss Lord shakes your hand, better count your fingers.

Golden Girls' Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan here with Frank Aletter) and Sam Malone, Cheers' glib Boston barkeep(Ted Danson, right, with Shelley Long), may just be TV's most libidinous characters. A veteran woman chaser, insatiable Sam will sleep "with almost any female who walks." The flirtatious Ms. Devereaux feasts on men like a vulture over a fresh corpse. A typical Blanchism: "Isn't it interesting how the sounds are the same for an awful nightmare and great sex?"

Jack Abbott (Terry Lester with Christopher Templeton, left, and Lauren Koslow) is daytime's Sultan of Smarm. For starters, the top stud on The Young and the Restless has slept with his father's wife. He arranged his own phony marriage and blackmailed his sister. He has raised the manipulation of the air-headed women in his life to an art. A real prince—of darkness.

Abby Cunningham Ewing, Knots Landing's conscienceless homewrecker (played by Donna Mills), has embezzled, been an accomplice in the kidnapping of baby twins, had an affair with her brother-in-law J.R. of Dallas and seduced just about every other susceptible male who wields any power. Besides all that, she wears too much eye makeup.

Rick Hunter is played by former football star Fred Dryer (with Stepfanie Kramer), a macho rule-breaking cop on the head-bashing Huntersenes. Dirtier than Harry, he shoots first and asks questions later. Read a prisoner his rights? Is the Pope Italian?

J.R. Ewing has never met a sin he didn't think about. The dastardly J.R. (Larry Hagman with Victoria Principal) is an adultery enthusiast who has never been faithful to wife Sue Ellen for more than two weeks in a row. He even seduced her sister. Outfoxing and cheating his oil cartel cronies is second nature to him. He drove Sue Ellen to drink and then had her committed to sanitariums twice for alcoholism.

Angela Channing, Falcon Crest's ruthless matriarch (Jane Wyman) honors no one, especially thy family. She had her brother's corpse dumped off a cliff, drove her daughter Julia insane and chased away any suitor her hapless other daughter, Emma, could attract. This woman manufactures mayhem for fun. When she nearly lost her vineyards, she bartered her own baby grandson to keep her fortune. Just think, she could have been First Lady.

Robin Leach (that's his real name, folks), the outrageously manic host of that all-star salute to avarice, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, is no J.R. as sinners go. But does he have to drool like that? And hey, Robin, stop yelling.